Back-office provider adds performance-reporting engine to its core offering. iPro One has selected Black Diamond Performance Reporting to support its CPA360 back-office offering to CPA-owned RIAs. Black Diamond's platform can be added to CPA360 to let advisors outsource data aggregation and performance reporting and view client data in flexible interface.

Integrating CPA360 with Black Diamond's performance-reporting engine "allows CPA firms to leverage critical data, meet their fiduciary responsibilities and assist their clients, and grow the wealth-management function of the firm," according to Black Diamond's CEO Reed Colley.

Acquisitions

Expanding on this theme, iPro One's CEO Anthony Wood says that adding Black Diamond's performance reporting with CPA360 gives CPAs the opportunity to see information needed for tax analysis along side wealth-management performance reporting. "We are making it much easier for CPA firms to conduct performance analysis, benchmarking comparisons, client reviews and other forms of financial analysis to continue to position them as the most trusted advisor to high-net-worth clients," he adds.

Three-year-old iPro One provides third-party investment products and related consulting services to CPA-owned wealth managers. Though it has a roster of outsource-only clients, it began taking minority-ownership stakes in its institutional clients this year. To date it has bought into HbK Sorce Financial, the wealth-management subsidiary of Alliance, Ohio-based CPA Hill, Barth & King, and Tegra Financial Partners, an affiliate of Atlanta-based accountancy Habif, Arogeti & Wynne.

New York-based iPro One -- which got a capital infusion from Houston-based investment bank Sanders Morris Harris in 2007 -- plans to make about five acquisitions a year through the next five years.

"CPA firms are seeing major growth in the wealth management practice areas of their firms," says Wood.

iPro One recently added Advisor Software Inc.'s client-proposal system to CPA360. Jacksonville, Fla.-based Black Diamond reported on more than $22 billion in assets under management for 82 institutional clients as of May 2008. -FWR

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